Naval Researchers Fight Metal Corrosion

A US Navy researcher was honored for helping design a physical-scale modeling system to combat corrosion on ships. The system is projected to save the military up to $10 million annually in restoration costs.

Keith Lucas, a materials research engineer at the Naval Research Laboratory (NRL), received the 2012 Department of the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award for his team's 20 years of work to design physical scale models of ships to advance impressed current cathodic protection (ICCP), a method the Navy uses to protect the underwater portion of a ship's hull from corrosion.

Lucas told us that, in ICCP, anodes (devices that emit electric currents) are attached to the hull to change the metal's polarization to a "benign chemical reaction" state that will not corrode. The Navy has been using such systems for many years, but they historically have been an imperfect science. "The trick to these systems is you have to design them in the right way," he said. "You have to put the anode in the right place."

National Research Lab Commanding Officer Capt. Paul Stewart, right, presents the Navy Meritorious Civilian Service Award to Keith Lucas. He was honored for his team's 20 years of workto create ship models to advance anti-corrosion research.(Source: NRL)

In the 1980s, when Lucas and his team began their research, anodes were placed "empirically," meaning engineers never knew the result of the treatment on the hull until after the ICCP system was used on it. "We had overpolarization and underpolarization," Lucas said. "That’s bad. We wanted them to be the way we want them to be."

To develop a more precise system, researchers created fiberglass models (using steel in specific places where anodes would be placed) and placed them in tanks to test the performance of systems. This has resulted in a far more accurate way of using ICCP to preserve ship hulls. "We look at how the hull is when it's brand new and add steel that's going to corrode such that we can predict years into the future." The military now uses these models to design ICCP systems to prevent corrosion.

The Navy spends nearly $3 billion annually to fix corrosion damage of ships. The NRL says the methodology developed by Lucas and his team has been used with eight Navy ship classes and three submarine classes to cut these costs.

Corrosion, and with it, chipping and painting, is a huge problem (as every bluejacket knows) If this is anywhere close to the solution to an age-old naval problem the Navy has advanced a great deal towards cost savings.

Corrosion is expensive. The cost of corrosion to industrialized nations is about 3 percent of GDP. In the United States that adds up to $2-4 trillion per decade, which equates to rebuilding Hurricane Katrina-scale infrastructure three or four times.

Yes, corrosion is expensive, especially when you're dealing with big things like ships, planes and vehicles for the military, manufacturing equipment, and industrial pipelines. It's important to be pre-emptive when it comes to corrosion prevention or else you could wind up spending a lot more than you'd like. You can see how products like moisture barrier bags and vapor corrosion inhibitors protects airplanes and equipment:

Mydesign: I'm not aware of any production military submarine hull that is made of anything other than high strength steel... The Russians used titanium alloy hulls, but no one uses "sheet metal" or "fiber plates"... These materials would not be useful in this application... Do you have a specific example of a submarine that uses the materials you mentioned?

Not sure I see how your comment is anywhere close to relevant... I didn't see any mention of how much the team spent on the project... My (real life) experience with NRL is that most of the projects there are run on a shoestring, and many of them yield useful results that transition very quickly into the commercial world (just like all of the other national labs)... This project translates into commercial application as well, potentially saving commercial shipping companies billions over the lifetime of their fleets... This translates into economic benefit for a VERY large group of people...

@KennJ: $3 billion is the total annual cost of corrosion for Navy ships. It includes the costs of corrosion prevention, R&D, maintenance, and losses due to corrosion. For the entire Department of Defense, the cost of corrosion is about $22.5 billion.

@Mydesign: There is no such thing as a corrosion-free metal. (You might say that polymers and ceramics are "corrosion-free," but that doesn't mean they are immune to environmental degradation). I strongly doubt that anyone in any country is building a submarine or any other marine structure without some kind of cathodic protection system.

Elizabeth, that's a huge amount and comes approximately equivalent to the cost of a submarine. But many of the submarines of other countries are made of corrosion free substances like sheet metal with ionized coating, fiber plates etc. Why still US navy didn't use such corrosion free metals.

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